Athletes turning to performance enhancing drugs
have missed the most potent enhancer, the mind
Although the recent discussions on performance enhancement have been those focused on steroids and the long list of other drugs banned by the governing bodies of sport, what has not been discussed are the healthy alternatives to improving performance. One alternative that will be highlighted in this article is the use of the mind. Although drug use in sport is nothing new (first being seen at the ancient Olympic games of Greece), it is understandable that there has been more recently been such an outcry about performance enhancing drugs. Although the drugs often used today can facilitate brief moments of success, they can leave people in a health crisis for years. Sadly, there will always be those who will seek out ways to circumvent the rules and rationalize their actions. Steven Ungerleider, Ph.D., a fellow sport psychologist, outlines this in his book Faust’s Gold which chronicles the East German doping machine from the 1950’s-1988. This book, from early 2001, is thoughtful, ironic, sad, and poignant. Today’s athlete’s might do better to look beyond the pharmacy to their minds in order to find peak potentials. By introducing and familiarizing athletes to sport psychology principles, they can have a healthier option.
Sport psychology/performance psychology seeks to provide peak performance opportunities for anyone. It provides the tools to be able to look within and capture the zone. I am always amazed by how few people know about sport psychology/performance psychology; most often people think it is new. In reality, it has been around since the turn of the 19th century. Its slow journey into the world’s vernacular can be attributed to various sources, all of which are an exploration for another time. These tools can be used by anyone because all of us are performers. Whether you are an athlete or not, “performance is performance.” Whether you are a stay-home mom, a CEO, a nurse, or a wide receiver, the principles athletes use to improve their game are the same principles anyone can apply to improve performance. For the sake of this article I will focus more on athletes.
Most of sport and the teachers of sport focus on physical repetition as the gateway to excellence. However, once the basic biomechanics are learned continued reps without looking at the mental and emotional aspects of performance produce training that is incomplete. As a sport psychology consultant, I often hear from athletes and coaches alike that their sport is 70%, 80%, 90%, or even 100% mental. Yet, when I ask how much time they spend looking at these aspects, the answers are usually “not at all” to “rarely.” When I have run coaches clinics and have coaches describe a good athlete, more times than not, half to over half of the adjectives used are mental and emotional; “focused”, “confident”, “has fun”, “motivated”, “disciplined”, etc. However, it is clear, more often than not, the mental and emotional aspects of excellence are over looked.
For any performer to be at their best one must look to honor physical, mental, and emotional readiness. Physical readiness is the foundation. You might be surprised to hear a psychologist say that but there is no way around that fact. We are physical beings. Practice must come in the form of conditioning, eating, sleeping, and recovery. Recovery cannot be overlooked for it is in the recovery from stress (conditioning/training) that we grow stronger; not in cycles of incompatible workloads without rest. If we do not recover properly, we will eventually breakdown. Even the most elite athletes experience this from over training. Mental readiness starts with being able to concentrate, stay focused, and discipline one’s ways of thinking and communicating. Emotional readiness applies to being able to find and manage energy, as well as having the ability to conjure emotions to produce or decrease emotional energy given the demands of the situation.
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